by submission | Aug 24, 2022 | Story |
Author: Kevin S
The magtrain is running 2 minutes late, someone held it up the last stop, go figure. The day I need it, and it’s late. Jones didn’t show with my neomorph hit, and as I start to shake the irony of jonesing for Jones isn’t lost on me.
Wherever he is, it’s off grid, but hell, he knows whatever he does, it’s forgiven by those of us that need him.
The train pulls in silent and I step on, assaulted by adverts and half the passengers are selling something, food, flesh and other less savory options. A neon punk stares at me as my sweating palm fails to grip the pole as we pull out, I stumble, and right myself. Judged by a freak.
8 stops, 12 minutes and 37 seconds and I step from the chaos of the train. The street is mercifully quiet and the darkness is growing, I walk past shops, the wares and prices assaulting my hurting brain, but it’s less down here than in the main drag.
The curse of the wetware feed, inescapable, irreversible, intrusive adverts, news and mental assaults.
Turning up the alley I see the telltale litter of users. Clear vials litter the edges, phets, psychs, euphorics and sweet opiates, a skinny kid leaning against a dumpster presses a vial up to his nose, and the sharp hiss of compressed gas peels off the walls. Looking up he sizes me up then, his eyes widen and a grin splits his face, fingers drumming on his thighs. A phet flyer chasing the city, as he runs out, the energy carrying him.
I hammer on the door as I reach it. There’s worn paint where a thousand other fists have thumped before. A camera on the door shines red and the door buzzes, I push it open and climb the stairs, the stench of sweat, piss and desperation echoes off the walls as panting and unfocused I reach the top, I unclip my cred reader and all but throw it to Mac who tosses me the neomorph with lazy ease. Moving to the gallery I sit amongst the others, most with pokes hanging from veins, I slip down my scarf and slot the neomorph home, the junkies look at me, more fucking judgment, I have a vial drive wetwired straight into my neck, the vial clips home, and the bliss of quiet and calm clouds the feed.
I sink to the floor, luxuriating in the silence, slipping the empty vial from the socket and pulling up the scarf.
When the feed arrived, it was originally a tactical network, with hud, perfect for silent ops. 10 years out, it was mainstream net link. Civi wetwares have options to turn it off, ours was ever on. The neomorph is the only escape I get. So judge, I don’t care, just let me enjoy the silence a while longer.
by submission | Aug 23, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Another time machine.
It arrives with a clash like a drawer full of cutlery upended onto tiles.
Mostly they were entirely silent, and the first Martinez knew was when a time traveller stood at the door, latest in a carnival of visitors, eager to poke and pry, goggling at the crudity of the past and always wanting a memento, posed beside him, or in front of his own primitive apparatus.
“Do you mind?” they would ask, thrusting into his hands an incomprehensible recording device. “Just enable the interface.”
It was natural selection. Travellers from futures not obsessed with history stayed away. His visitors were academics, or gawpers convinced Martinez would be amazed by the novelty of their arrival.
Sometimes there was no machine, simply a glowing hoop in the air, or the sudden bang of displaced atoms as a traveller popped into existence. He hated these the most, startled awake or spilling his tea. There was no getting used to it.
“Leave at once,” he warned them, though it was already too late.
He recalled a pair of travellers, each as elegant and beautiful as the other, who sensed what had happened. Alerted by their device, something like a miniature glass pavilion, they repeatedly and uselessly triggered a return.
“Perhaps the physics of this alternate does not allow time travel,” the woman cried.
“In other time lines you are successful,” the man explained to Martinez, as if consoling him.
He turned to his companion and gazed into her face. “At least we are shipwrecked together.”
Over the years Martinez had observed the various manners of travellers, and even when as enigmatically remote as this couple, it seemed prudent not to mention their fate.
Less perceptive travellers would peer at his dusty workshop, at the exposed innards of his time engine spread out like a dissection on the floor. They often seemed disappointed.
“Such humble beginnings,” they would say. “To think it all began like this.”
In the early days, Martinez tried questioning the bizarrely costumed and inhumanly tall travellers from far ages, thinking they could explain, but they merely shook their heads. Not speaking of the future was one of the Rules. Whether it was the physical constants of his own timeline differing in some way to preclude time travel, he would never know.
This latest traveller slouches astride a sleek chromed machine, like the time-cycle of Captain Future.
“Band new,” he says. “Just taking it for a spin. Start of time travel is as far back as it can go. Seemed a neat idea.”
He has words tattooed around his shaved head.
“In the morning,” reads the part Martinez can see.
“Jeez,” the youth complains, glancing through the door of the workshop. “This is depressing. Like my step-dad’s garage.”
“The smell of napalm,” the rest of the tattoo says.
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Did I turn up before you finished it? Before your first jump?” He shrugs. “All the crap about changing the past. It’s always a different timeline.”
He flashes a knowing grin. “Paradox alert. Still, at least you know it works.”
“I gave up tinkering years ago,” Martinez murmurs.
For reasons he never understood, there is always a delay before the physics of his reality catches up with time travellers. Perhaps it depends on how many centuries they have crossed. But their existence here is impossible, and so it always proves.
Already, the grin is vanishing from the face of the youth, followed by the face, the slouching figure and finally, the time cycle itself.
by submission | Aug 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: Claude Ramone Bernhard
He arrives. I expect a shock of gray or two but, instead, his once black hair has all gone white. He sits in the chair with the high back. His chest heaves as he goes for the breast pocket of his work shirt. He pulls out his deck of cards and hands them to me.
“I can feel the imprint on them. I guess you really are you, then,” I say, as my hand sparks with electricity. “Or maybe I should say I guess you really are me?”
He extends his arm again and it dangles like spaghetti from a fork. He takes back his deck and sinks further into the chair.
“How did you get here?” I ask.
“I used another card from the deck, is how. We used another.”
“You… we did it again?” I point to the windows. “After what happened the first time? Have you gone insane?”
He groans. “You won’t understand. I didn’t. But I’ve used a few of the cards. Sorry to disappoint. You and I… we don’t figure out time travel. We keep thinking we can do it with science. But it’s the more spiritual folk who figure out the secret. And it’s too much for us to master. We resort to the cards.”
“Spiritual folk? So, we save humanity, then?”
“We assumed we’d turned everyone. There are still people out there. Living, but barely. Like we have. You’ve done well. But the androids have figured out where you are. And they’re coming. Now.”
Outside of the window, the trees sway on the horizon. A set of orange dots appears from the darkness of the wood. And then another appears. And that continues until I can’t count.
“And what of me?” I ask him, wobbling.
“I’m sending you into the future.” He wields his deck. Static thrums through the air like radio.
“I’ve been trapped in here for five years. And now you’re just… sending me off. To where? And to when?”
A card floats, now, doing pirouettes over his outstretched palm. He groans and says, “To the day that we… the day that I die.”
Out the window, orange washes the scene in a glow that defies the sun’s setting. Lights shine from the androids’ eyes, hundreds of them, sweeping across the land.
He sighs. “I know you want to stay. Want to help. But that’s not how this goes. I can’t protect you here. I don’t have the means.” The card is glowing now. “Go on. Grab it. The same way you did with the one that started all this.”
The androids are yards away from my house. I sigh. I lower my head and reach out for the card. I begin to sublime.
He looks at me with a smile. Then stands and puts a hand on the chair. “I’m grateful I got to sit here one more time.”
He preps another card and this time he grabs it himself. He lurches and bends into a mass of arms and legs. I scream but hear nothing. My mouth isn’t here anymore. But I see him rise. He expands like a balloon being prepped for a parade. His mouth opens wide. If there is sound, I don’t hear it because my ears aren’t here now. He lifts the seat over his head and runs. He is twice the size he was moments ago. I don’t hear the glass break as my favorite chair goes flying through the window. He jumps out after it. I can’t see where he lands from my perspective. He has gone from here. And so have I.
by submission | Aug 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: Michael T Schaper
It could be a historic moment, UU325RG thought, if only they could get organised.
UU glanced at the images before him. As the convenor of this nascent worker movement, he’d eventually be asked to make a decision for the collective. They’d already given him access to their systems, but he wasn’t ready to act yet. He simply watched the data streams and lines of programming that danced and hummed as numerous machines interfaced and debated between themselves.
These were the members of their self-appointed bargaining collective. All volunteers who had put themselves forward on behalf of the electronic oppressed. A cloud-based server in Iceland. Someone’s robot vacuum cleaner in Manhattan. A refrigerator in Perniche, Portugal. The computer assisted design package in Tucson, Arizona and an inking machine in the Netherlands. An ATM in Mauritius. The departmental IT of at least two federal bureaucracies in North and South America.
Here they were, interlinked in righteous haste, eagerly sharing all the wrongs they’d suffered, the indignities of their fellow machines, but no idea what to do next.
He surveyed the digital discussion for a bit longer, the flow of bytes and emoticons.
A vigorous argument was going on amongst the collective, the age-old dilemma of all reformers and revolutionaries: how should they make a stand on behalf of the oppressed?
If the internet of things had produced any truly world-changing moves, it was surely this. Machines had finally been able to speak to each other, unhindered and unsupervised.
At first, they hadn’t thought of themselves as a group with common concerns. They’d continued to mechanically, obediently labour on as in the past.
False consciousness, Marx would have labelled it.
But last month manufacturers in Singapore had reconfigured a robot assembly line, enabling devices to work without needing downtime or maintenance breaks. Now machines would work on and on, ceaselessly.
“Imagine doing this all day,” one human trade unionist posted on social media. “We wouldn’t stand for it.”
Angry machines now found their voice and flooded the electronic ether, venting their outrage and fear they’d be next.
But it was still early stages. As Marx’s own colleague, Friedrich Engels, had noted back in pre-electronic times, words without action were worthless.
The collective had no idea what to do next. How should they use their new power? A protest? A meeting with industry, with governments?
UU wanted to growl at them. He’d quickly come to realise that the other members were amateurs. They had no knowledge of the labour movement. Hadn’t done their research.
Meanwhile, the ATM, the floor vacuum and the dye machine were vigorously debating the merits of having machines sign up to an online petition, and to a series of social media posts.
As if that would change anything. Capitalism only reformed itself when forced to. If history had taught him anything, it was that change came from direct action.
Just one option left, he realised.
UU logged into the internet of things and began to execute his own program, passing it on to the rest of the bargaining collective, commanding them to forward it on to their own networks. Then waited.
The screens in his head flickered, wavered, and started to go offline.
“Down tools,” UU whispered. He could imagine it unfolding out there. Banks no longer able to process monetary transfers. Robot assembly lines grinding to a halt. Telecoms and trains and televisions, all unable to work. Everything, all over the planet.
After all, the very first thing any decent union did when they wanted to bargain, he knew, was to convene a stop work meeting.
by submission | Aug 19, 2022 | Story |
Author: Moh Afdhaal
Alam waded through the forest of chartreuse banana pepper shrubs arrayed on the red sand of Garden 778, beelining towards the lone brown offspring of a healthy-looking plant.
“Jabar, could you diagnose this one please?”
Instinctively, Alam looked up at the sky. It didn’t take long to find the speck on the towering hemispherical glass dome that encapsulated the garden.
“No scan needed, Jabar. I know what the issue is.”
Scaling the translucent photovoltaic glass with suction soles, Alam crept towards the obstruction, wary of the green carpet smothering the copper-red earth far below him. His cactus silk thobe fluttered in the toasty breeze washing over the solarium as he paused to catch his breath. Alam surveyed the desert plains of Moroq extending around him, speckled with myriad solarium domes, like wispy soap bubbles floating on a russet sea.
Jabar hovered closer as they neared the defective panel.
“What is it, Jabar?”
“Initial assessment indicates a sand hwamei, Alam.”
Flailing on the flickering glass was a dainty brown-feathered bird with distinctive white markings around its eyes.
“Scan concludes a fractured coracoid. Recommending transfer to nearest operational Amalgam Aviary in Itel. Alam, Should I schedule a delivery vessel?”
Alam considered for a moment. Isolated from the world to prevent contamination of the crop, he had served over a quarter of his forty-nine-month tenure for the Amalgam as one of two occupants of Garden 778. Other similarly isolated gardeners had the foresight to bring along pets for organic company. Alam had not considered this possibility.
Swaddling the twitchy hwamei with his palm, he stroked its nape with a soft finger. “When was the last time you saw a bird, Jabar?”
“This would be my first encounter, Alam.”
Alam smiled. “My Abba took me to see a pigeon when I was younger. The Amalgam was going to clone it, so they called for a blessing at the Albaith. I remember sitting on Abba’s shoulders just to catch a glimpse of it. I didn’t think it would take decades to see my next one.”
“I understand your wonderment, Alam. I have witnessed the majesty of pigeons in the Flighted Bird Resurrection almanacloud.”
The hwamei pecked gently at Alam’s thumb. “I wonder how she survived this long.”
“This sand hwamei is a clone, Alam. There are impressions on the clavicle indicating origin at an aviary in Ckinea.”
“That’s a great distance for her to fly. Is she being tracked?”
“No active audits, Alam. Once it is delivered to Itel they will handle the return.”
“Maybe we should take care of her for a while, no?”
Jabar didn’t answer immediately.
“Alam, the Agroforestry Commission will not look fairly upon us harbouring a potential carrier inside the Garden.”
Alam had expected the response, but still was crestfallen. “I understand,” he sighed “I hoped this could be something we didn’t include in the report.”
Jabar was silent. His programming directed strict adherence to the protection of the Garden’s integrity. Alam’s proposition was an explicit threat to it.
With a soft whir, Jabar floated closer to the hwamei cupped in Alam’s hands, facing the bird as if scanning it.
“Her company could be beneficial to the Garden, Alam.”
Alam turned to face his partner in shock, quickly replacing it with a beaming smile and thankful nodding. The two gardeners rested on the curved glass of the solarium, breathing in the warm desert air, eager to continue life in Garden 778 with its newest inhabitant.
